Who is at fault if parallel parking causes a collision?

Q: If I’m parallel parking and someone hits me, who would be ticketed?

A: Each incident is evaluated on a case-by-case basis, police said. But here are two examples.

If a driver is making a reasonable parallel parking attempt on a left or right side of the street and a driver in the lane next to the parking strip hits the parker, that driver could be ticketed for following too closely, police said.

Read more about following too closely form the Revised Code of Washington here.

If, for example, a driver is on 4th Avenue in Seattle and does a sloppy parallel park job and veers into the inside lane – the lane two away from the parking strip – it would be the parking driver’s fault if a collision occurs, according to police.

“You can’t occupy two lanes of travel,” department spokesman Jeff Kappel said. “You have to be prudent when you back up.”